Look, it ain’t easy being a woman who comes from nothing and builds an entire international drug trade of her own — and that apparently goes double for the storytellers attempting to depict that unbelievable true story for an expensive streaming series. Then again, perhaps it was only fitting that a fictionalized depiction of a criminal empire would itself wind up in the crosshairs of a legal dispute. According to Entertainment Tonight (via CBS News), Netflix and “Griselda” star/producer Sofia Vergara are both being sued by the family of the real Griselda Blanco, who died in Colombia back in 2012. The main complaint is that her now-adult children, who run her estate, allege that they never authorized the use of their likenesses in the show or were compensated for the material used in the scripts and, as a result, seek to prevent the series from airing at all. This will be a mighty tough task, admittedly, given that “Griselda” is currently on track to premiere on Netflix tomorrow, January 25, 2024.
But it gets even wilder than that. Apparently, even families of drug lords have a tremendous sense of humor. Although there’s nothing trivial about allegations that Netflix didn’t do its due diligence in clearing all aspects of this story for their fictionalized retelling (which is only the latest adaptation of the Griselda Blanco saga, as Catherine Zeta-Jones previously starred as the drug queenpin in the 2018 Lifetime movie “Cocaine Godmother”), maybe you do have to hand it to the Blanco family. Griselda’s son is listed among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and — get this — his name is Michael Corleone Blanco. You just can’t make this stuff up, folks.